Holiday Cards

I’m at an age where I know practically nobody aside from my cousins that sends out holiday cards. And I LOVE receiving cards! Every year on the Qbee forum, a Qbee member organizes a very informal card swap where we all exchange addresses and send our cards and then you sit back and watch the greetings roll in.

Sometimes people include stickers, or a sweet note, or maybe they just took special care in picking out the card. The exchange is open to members in all countries, and it is SO COOL to get an envelope from The Netherlands or Norway!

The holiday card swap isn’t the only great thing about the Qbee, but it’s the one I think about the most during the Christmas season. It makes the holidays that much more enjoyable, and I look forward to it every year!

If you want to learn more about The Quilting Bee or why you might want to join, check it out!

As I got nearer to our building, I found one! It was on the other side of the street, so I had to turn around. As I was backing up to get even with the car in front of me, someone in a big SUV turned onto our block and zoomed into the spot I was going to park in.

I sat there.

I glared.

I may have said some bad words.

Fine, I thought. I will find the next closest spot. It was all the way down the block (as opposed to being right in front of our steps), but I found one. I was able to just nose in instead of having to parallel park. Wesley was still sleeping.

I got him out of the car, put on my coat, grabbed my bag and my iced chai, and set off down the block. It was slow going; I had my bag on one shoulder and my chai in that hand, and was holding the carseat by the handle and balancing the bulk of it on my hip and shuffling down the sidewalk one step at a time.

I passed the parking spot stealers (a middle-aged lady and what looked to be her elderly mother) and thought how stupid it was that they stole my close spot and had to walk all the way down to where I parked, and I had to walk all the way up the block to get home, when we could have just switched spots and each been closer to our destination.

I made it to our front door and thought, you know? At least I have a car. At least I am able to park it somewhere.

I was thankful that Wesley was (and is) still napping. (And made it up the front steps, in the building, and up a flight of stairs to our apartment without waking up!)

I was thankful we had a heated apartment to come home to.

I was thankful we had friends to see this morning and that Daniel has a job where we are welcome to stop by and visit.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I’m thankful for you, too.

Apropos of nothing: Law & Order SVU, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? Netflix has recently added a bunch of Law & Order episodes to the Instant Play option and I have watched SO MANY EPISODES this week. I love watching and reading crime stuff like that.

Also: Law & Order is SO much better than CSI. I always think that I like CSI but every time I watch an episode I am never sure whether it is a joke or not because the whole show is so CHEESY. Bad puns! Over-the-top dramatic acting! Totally absurd plot twists that Daniel mockingly suggests to me, only to have THAT VERY THING happen in the next scene!

(You will recall that while we have a television, we do not have television, like channels or cable. We use the TV for the Xbox/other video game consoles and DVD watching. I therefore miss out on all current television and catch up months or years down the line when it becomes available on Netflix.)

I got all my Christmas shopping done.

My tactic: Shopping Black Friday exclusively online, from the comfort of my own home. I make a spreadsheet for what I’m planning on getting and where (including links where necessary) and have at it. I’ve done this a few years in a row now and let me tell you, it’s SO NICE to be done by early December. No stress.

I injured myself finishing my Christmas shopping.

Even though my shopping tactic is lovely and effective, Daniel and I had two people we still needed to buy for last Saturday, so we set off downtown. WHY I thought it would be a good idea to walk all over kingdom come for hours and hours I have NO IDEA, but by the time we got home I could barely move. My pelvis felt so bad and hurty and my back felt bad and hurty and UGH. I tried sitting. I tried laying down. I tried laying on the floor. Everything hurt. I felt a little better on Sunday, but still definitely painful.

I got a pedicure!

And I think it improved my pelvic pain. It sounds hilariously weird but hear me out. Kerri and I went to get a pedicure at our usual place. The chairs they have are the silly massage kind with the attached remote control. I turned my chair on and immediately noticed these butt-squeezy massage things that I swear I have never experienced the other couple of times I’ve gotten a pedicure there. It squished your buns from the sides and then this sort of panel came up between your cheeks, kind of like a bike seat.

It was the WEIRDEST EVER and I kept giggling to Kerri about it, because seriously? A buttcheek massage? I don’t know. And then I wanted my chair to stop being so recliney because I wasn’t even touching the back of the seat, so I pressed the “forward” button but it went REALLY far forward and I almost couldn’t see Kerri anymore over the side of my chair. More giggling. I couldn’t get it to go back down! Plus, it was so jiggly that I finally had to turn it off because the pedicure girl kept telling me to stop moving. Whoops!

All this to say that we did that on Sunday and so far this week my hips/pelvis have felt very much improved. I am not cured, obviously, as I am still pregnant and achey but oh man, the difference is great. Pedicure chair FTW. Now all I need is a massage.

22 Weeks:

I bought a car!

YES. Okay, so. For the six years we have lived in Portland, Daniel and I have not owned a car. Our neighborhood really doesn’t require one to get around, so it hasn’t been a big deal. We have a Zipcar membership and there are buses all over the place and we’ve survived so far.

Thing is, with this whole business of adding a new member to our family, I have begun to get nervous about things. Things like how we get to doctor’s appointments with a brand-new baby. Or things like, what if my water breaks and I need to go to the hospital to deliver? We hadn’t really thought of a plan yet when I received an email from Kerri.

It turns out that Kerri’s parents are lovely people and are giving her a car for Christmas. Since she does not need two vehicles for one person with one parking spot, she generously offered to sell her current car to Daniel and I, for a very reasonable price. Big heart.

We weren’t really looking into buying a car, exactly, but the opportunity came up and I am pretty sure I’d be an idiot not to take her up on it. The official switcheroo should happen sometime in the next couple of weeks or so – we are both visiting home for the holidays so we are still working out the timing, but I am so excited. I don’t have the faintest idea how to own a car in Portland but I am just so glad we have a Plan A that doesn’t involve calling up random people at 3:30am with requests for rides to the hospital.

Me and a group of friends met at the coffeeshop beforehand and then drove down to the theater. We were there two and a half hours early, which went by REALLY REALLY SLOWLY. We talked about people’s outfits (there were a couple great Dumbledores in attendance), some people went back out for food, we shared book recommendations and twitter handles.

Finally, it was time for the movie! Here’s what I thought:

Massive spoilers ahead if any of you haven’t seen it yet…

Things that I felt weird about

• The FUNERAL. Good heavens. I’m not sure how they decided it’d be a good idea to leave it out, but I am still holding out hope that maybe the 7th movie will start out with it. I really wanted to see the white coffin and the phoenix song. I am also sad about this because this is where Harry breaks up with Ginny, and she says she understands even though we all know she is upset.
• Dumbledore’s wand not being in his coffin, but instead on his desk when Harry enters it to check it out after he dies. Perhaps they intended this scene to be pre-funeral? Because otherwise that has DIRECT and SERIOUS implications for the next movie(s).
• The leaving-out of the Astronomy tower battle. Director claims it was redundant to the final battle of Hogwarts in the last book, but there were SO MANY things they left out by association. I knew something was up when Harry drank all the Felix Felicis himself instead of only half, so he could share some with his friends during the battle.
• They never said who Fenrir Grayback was. You’re supposed to infer it, I guess, from the one “WANTED” poster briefly shown in one scene. Since they left out the Astronomy tower battle, they also left out Bill getting bit by Fenrir. What is Molly and Fleur’s conflict going to be about now?
• The Weasley house burning down. Seriously? What? The Burrow gets attacked in the next book for sure, but I have no idea what point they were intending to make with that scene. How are they going to resolve that for Bill and Fleur’s wedding? Or are they going to leave that out (SAD! I hope not!) since they didn’t do any kind of setup in this movie?

Things I later noticed they left out, but didn’t notice at the time so I don’t feel weird about it

• The beginning of the book with the Muggle prime minister or whatever, in his office
• Kreacher – I JUST NOW noticed that they left out his whole involvement in R.A.B.’s locket-stealing endeavor. I feel like starting a S.P.E.W.-like organization to promote the non-leaving-out of house elves in the HP movies. Poor Kreacher, Dobby, and Winky.
• More flashbacks of memories and Voldemort’s past. I forgot that they went to see the Gaunts with the ring, and Hepzibah Smith and her assorted wares and so Harry gets clues as to what the next Horcruxes would be. I didn’t think they set up the Horcrux hunt very well, so it feels like Harry has even less information than he does, which wasn’t a lot to begin with.

Things I really enjoyed

• Harry on Felix Felicis. Seriously hilarious. “Harry!” “Prooofesssor!” and “HI!”
• Ron, under Romilda Vane’s love potion, with that dippy look on his face soliloquizing about the moon
• The more natural humor interspersed throughout the movie. It’s a dark movie, but it’s also way funnier than the others and it feels much more like natural dialogue than forced scripting. I found myself giggling at certain parts and laughing out loud at others.
• Draco finally showing an emotion other than scorn. His scene where he’s sobbing in the bathroom was especially powerful.
• Luna Lovegood. Her lion hat! The weird shiny/poofy dress she wears to the Slug Club party! I didn’t like that they had her be the one to discover Harry in Draco’s train compartment, but I think they covered the switch pretty well. (It was actually Tonks in the book, and it makes less sense to introduce her there than it did to just have Luna discover him.)
• Cormac McLaggen – He was such a cocky asshole and had the perfect amount of attractive swagger mixed with total jerkface annoyingness. I kind of wish they would have put more of the Cormac/Hermione thing in the movie, but I’m not disappointed with it as-is.
• Harry and Dumbledore in the cave. I think they did that really well.

Overall, I did enjoy this movie a lot. I am upset about the bits they left out (the funeral and the Astronomy tower battle) but I don’t think they ruined the movie for me like the left-out bits did for the third movie. I find myself really, really wanting to watch it again because Harry has so much more personality and character in this one than in previous ones.

Have you seen it yet? What did you think?

Our friends’ save-the-date that came in the mail today:

Impromptu crafts, especially ones that involve Harry Potter:

(This is one of several. I don’t want to share them all just yet!)

Our lovely visit with Daniel’s mom and sister this past weekend, wherein we ate a lot of wonderful food, celebrated Gretchen’s 30th birthday, had dinner for Kerri’s birthday, and generally had a very good time. Daniel’s mom brought our Christmas present with her, which was a hand-painted basket (she’s a basketmaker) painted with coffee! Rad!

Now, back to cleaning the apartment. I don’t usually think of myself as a very messy person, but YOW does the living room get filled with junk when I am not looking. Sweatshirts everywhere, half-finished craft projects all over, and piles of things waiting to be sorted…